I was just putting the finishing touches on my pumpkin pie when the doorbell rang. The trill rang around in my ears. I froze, the freshly baked pie forgotten.

“Mother?” I called out softly, my ice-cold hands turning even colder despite the warm pie platter clenched between my fingers.

“What is it, Victoria?” Mother’s bell voice replaced the lingering sound of the doorbell. “If it’s about your pie, you know I don’t have time to–”

“It’s not about the pie, Mother,” I said firmly. “Did you not just hear the doorbell ring?”

Silence.

Then came a whoosh of air as Mother appeared beside me, her face the pale color of pearls, her dark hair falling in waves past her broad shoulders. As I peered at her, I was quite surprised to see fear across her usually expressionless face.

“Doorbell?” Mother repeated meekly. “Doorbell?” 

“Yes, Mother, the doorbell. Should I go get it?”

“No, you will not get it,” Mother decided firmly, her fists clenched at her sides. “Why would anyone…?” She trailed off, staring into blank space. 

“It’s Halloween, Mother,” I said, answering her silence. “It’s natural that trick-or-treaters would come.”

“But why here? And how?!” 

That I could not answer. Our isolated mansion stood, alone, with no trace of a soul for the next fifty miles on a mountain. Why, and how, would anyone come here for Halloween?

“It…I…they don’t know that…do they?”

I knew exactly what she was talking about. 

“You think that they know we’re vampires.”

Mother looked at me with no emotion but so much emotion at the same time.

“Do you?”

“I don’t know, Mother, but we mustn’t keep them waiting, whoever it is.” As if it was backing me up, the doorbell rang once again. “Unless it’s…” 

My face turned pale, and my fingers unclenched. The pie platter fell to the floor, shattering musically into a million little pieces.

“It’s impossible,” Mother insisted after a few minutes of silence except for the crows cawing outside.

There was absolutely no one who knew where we lived, except for one person on this lonely planet.

Daisy, a childhood friend of mine, only out of my life because we moved to this place on the mountain top, knew. Daisy, my polar opposite, so full of life and red flushed cheeks and color, knew. Daisy, who was my best friend until two years ago, knew that I lived in this isolated house on top of a tall mountain. I wanted her to visit, I wanted to. But Mother forbid me, lest it impact our life.

Daisy only knew because she’d tailed me. Daisy, with her stupid determination and her dumb goodness, followed our family van in her family car along with her mother on our moving day. Just to see where I would go, where I would go to abandon her, as she said it. Daisy, that little blond girl with the pigtails and cheeks full of life and warmth, was the only soul on this entire lonely, lonely planet who knew that I lived here. 

Daisy was also the only person who knew that I may be a vampire.

“Well,” I said. “Mother, may I go get the door?”

More silence. 

“Yes,” came Mother’s voice finally. “Yes, you may get the door, Victoria.”

One step.

Another.

Another. 

More, more, more, until I was face to face with the rickety door that was barely attached to its hinges. It swayed with the wind, held in place by that one hinge and the lock.

I gripped my hand on the cold metal doorknob that has rusted away with time. I felt the cool metal gripped in my hand. Then, with a fresh rush of determination, I threw the door open.

I saw a silhouette in the darkness, standing before me.

Then I tackled the blond girl in a hug, pressing my cold face against hers that radiated warmth.

Her pigtails hadn’t changed.